http://forem.artician.com/ http://forem.artician.com/ http://uc.artician.com/members/1/0/10023/avatar.jpg en-us Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:30:51 -0500 http://forem.artician.com/blog/2009/08/cc-or-favs/ http://forem.artician.com/blog/2009/08/cc-or-favs/ .

Let’s take the favourites first. For the criticizer, favs are easy and quick way to show the artist that the art piece is liked. You don’t need to think any reasons why you especially like this art work, just one click tells everything. Or does it? To be honest, favs don’t tell nothing much to the artist, without the comment. I admit that I faved too, a lot, without leaving a comment behind. Now I’ve been trying to learn a new way and leave a short comment why I faved the work. Usually my comment is something like “Wonderful colour world, nice composition = fav”. And I think that is enough to tell why I loved the work. The good side of favs to the artist is that one doesn’t have to pay attention to answering long comments. If you have time you can go and say “Ty for the fav”, which doesn’t take much time either.

My humble opinion is that favs are good, but they could use some upgrading. What comes to my mind would be an easy two clicks faving. Click one: fav. Click two: pick up the biggest reason for faving from these examples given (composition, colours, theme, etc. etc.). And the artist could see some sort of index of given favs and reasons. It would give more to the artist and would not be too much work for either criticizer or artist.

So what about the comments and critique? To the criticizer giving advanced c&c takes time and effort. But both criticizer and artist can learn from it a lot and in the best cases a comment is a start for an open conversation about art. To the artist longer comments and critique also takes time to read, but also it’s a way to see the own artwork by someone else eyes. Usually this gives the artist something to think and in the best cases develops the artists skills.

But giving critique is always a bit scary (for me at least), because you never know what kind of person the artist is. One might offend the artist, no matter how advanced the given c&c would be. Still I see that the risk of offending someone is pretty small compared to the profit of learning progress what starts by answering one’s own question: exactly why I love this piece?
]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:07:11 -0400 http://forem.artician.com/blog/2009/07/critique-positive-negative-and-neutral/ http://forem.artician.com/blog/2009/07/critique-positive-negative-and-neutral/
Flattering words or negative comments can be as much irritating as getting no comment from your friend in irl. To me, giving advanced comments and critique means that I say the positive, negative and also neutral things that comes in my mind when I see the artwork. Often in the internet I leave out the negative and neutral, because I'm a bit afraid I might offend the artist. Writing the critique does always take away the voice that explains a lot of little nuances. Also, English is not my national language so I still might write sentences that contains wrong kind of nuances.

My friend tried to explain to me how hard it really is to give critique and comments. It opened my mind to a whole new thing which I haven't thought about at all. I have an art education so I know the terms and because I have had to critique my friends work over and over again (which is really a good thing to me!). I also talk a lot with fellow students a lot and tell what we think about each others works, sometimes really frankly. And it helps us to create better and better art. But he doesn't have the education or the intrest to talk about art so deeply we do, either he likes the art or not. And the most importantly, he had not needed to give comments or critique.

So what happens when I show him the work and tell him to say what he thinks?
Well, he tries to be polite: 'I like it, it's really nice.'

So my next question is: Now tell me more, what do you like about it? The composition, colours? Maybe the theme is near your heart? I also tell him that there is no need to be polite, I can't expect that all the people in the world loves my works! So he tries to think about why he likes it, or does he really like it at all. In time, because I was asking a lot of questions, he learned to know not to say only 'nice' but 'nice, I like the way... but I hate the way...'

Giving an advanced critique is a skill that needs to be learned. And that my friend teached to me. I've learned to comment and give critique from artschool, thing that I didn't thought at all. It was not written in my timetable "Today we learn how to give good critique!" It sort of came along the way, without me being noticing. And I'm still learning. Here in the internet I too often go back to the positive and polite 'great style' commenting. I need to get away with that and get some real information to my comments and critique. Though sometimes all you really have to say is that irritating 'Omg, I love this piece!'

Commenting and giving critique is all about learning the skill and knowing the little nuances of written language.



p.s.
For the typos you can blame me, I'm lazy with my english dictionary. Hope that these thoughts gave something for you to think or comment.
C&c very welcome.]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:24:34 -0400